The first thing they take is your name.
Not really, of course. You still sign it on essays, see it stitched on your blazer, hear it called across the quad. But by the end of Orientation Week, your name doesn't mean you anymore. It means a number. A cluster of behaviors. A risk profile.
Luka Abara didn't know that when he arrived.
He laughed too loudly in the dining hall. Sat with different people every night. Once, he left his earpiece in the library — the silver disc they all wear behind the ear, "for language immersion," they said. He forgot it for six hours.
Six hours offline.
They called it a deviation.
At first, the changes were small. His roommate stopped talking to him. Then his lab partner. Then the girl he'd been texting stopped replying. No drama. No fight. Just silence, spreading like something inevitable.
They didn't expel him. That would leave a trace.
Instead, they lowered his score.
Not in math. Not in ethics. In influence. In emotional stability. In future leadership viability.
He tried to fix it. Smiled more. Spoke less. Wore his earpiece like a penance.
But the Index doesn't reward effort. It rewards conformity. And Luka was too bright, too restless, too real to ever disappear properly.
The night he climbed the library roof, it was raining.
No one saw him go. No one heard the door click open at 2:17 a.m. The cameras didn't flag it — authorized access, student ID 2024-LA7.
He stood at the edge for seventeen minutes.
Then he stepped off.
They called it a tragedy. Posted a eulogy on the Veridian site. Offered counseling.
But in the faculty lounge the next morning, Dr. Moss closed her tablet and said, "The system worked. The weak node was culled."
And the rest of them — the ones still ranked, still climbing — nodded, sipped their tea, and went back to class.
They didn't know I was watching.
They don't know I'm still watching.
This is not a story about revenge.
It's about what happens when someone finally refuses to be erased.
— Sage Morrow
Veridian Academy, Room 317